Daily Prayer

Wednesday, 30 December 2009

Paul
writes – One of the good things about summer holidays is a
chance to relax and catch up on films that weren’t able to be seen on the big
screen during the year. Most recently I’ve caught up on the lovely little movie
Sunshine Cleaning. Almost as good a
seeing the films is listening to friend Gareth Higgins and his colleague Jett
Lowe debating the merits or otherwise of movies. They have a great website – The Film Talk – and produce a weekly
podcast. I commend it and shall be visiting it often during the course of 2010.
They offer great insights into some excellent movies and reveal layers of
meaning and significance that I’d missed when watching the movie the first
time. It makes for a richer second viewing.

Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Paul writes – Now while not a
“Hauerwas groupie” I have a huge admiration for his thinking and ways of being
in the world, ways that emerge out of his theology. I’ve read numerous essays
by him over the years, and have thoroughly enjoyed introductions to Hauerwas by the likes of William Cavanaugh, and
the occasional published PhD thesis
that interacts with Hauerwas’ thinking, particularly in relation to
ecclesiology. I’m very much looking forward to reading his memoir, while hoping that Walter Brueggemann is doing something
similar (or having somebody write his theological
biography).

Meantime I enjoyed reading a brief interview on leadership with
Stanley Hauerwas.

“Leadership
can’t be abstracted from the communities that make it possible, says
Stanley Hauerwas, a Duke Divinity School professor considered to be one of the
[United States of America’s] most influential theologians.”

Here are
some excerpts:

“...Power is rightly one of the
gifts God has given us for the formation of good communities and good people.
The way you put the question presupposes that you might have an alternative.
You don’t. You have to discuss questions of how you discover those among you
with gifts necessary for the whole community...

...So much of how creative
authority works is by being articulate for the community about what needs to be
done in a way that defies limits. It
often comes by reframing and helping us discover ways to understand where we
are in terms that do not reproduce the necessities of the past...

...The recognition of limit is a good discipline for discovering what kind
of institution you actually should be...

... I have often been identified as someone who is very critical of the
institutions of which I’m part. I oftentimes am, but that’s a lovers’ quarrel.
I’m, I hope, a very institutional person...

... The church’s liturgy has been a history
of constant innovation. Innovation
should occur in a way that we recognize continuities through time.

It was a bad innovation when the revivalistic
structure overtook the church’s primary liturgical form in a way that
charismatic preachers replaced the centrality of Eucharist...

... People called to administrative
positions have to undergo a deep ascetical discipline. You’re dealing with people who have possibilities and limits, the
limits sometimes will drive you crazy, and you cannot take it personally.

...You do this to provide space for the
different gifts of the community. I’m very Pauline in this. Communities have
diversities of gifts. Part of your responsibility as an administrator and
leader is to help members of the community own them as contributing to the
overall good of the community. To be in a position of power means that you
recognize how fragile the power is. You wouldn’t have it otherwise. And you
have enough confidence that you don’t have to win all the time. That’s a real
ascetic discipline, a discipline of the ego, which is absolutely crucial for
being an administrator and to allow the institution to go on once you’re no longer
there...

...For any person that wants to be in leadership, if they try to lead in a
way that means they don’t have to deal with people, they automatically defeat
community. It is everyday interactions that make it possible for there to be
people who tell the truth to us one at a time in the hopes that in that process
we will be a truthful community...”

You can read the complete interview and watch a brief video clip here.

Monday, 28 December 2009

Paul writes – I
missed the date (8th Dec.
2009), but I wanted to mark what would have been Lesslie Newbigin's100th
birthday if he hadn’t died on the 30th January 1998. I’ve read
Newbigin and have heard a lot about Newbigin over the last 4-5 years in
particular. Al Roxburgh, Steve Taylor, Colin Greene and Martin Robinson have
been big advocates, offering both affirmation and critique, and it is through
them that I have come to really appreciate and value Newbigin’s insights and
just how contemporary and relevant they still are.

As we consider mission in Western Culture Newbigin’s is a voice we need to listen to and
enter into conversation with.

Below is an excerpt from an 8th December
article on Newbigin published in Christianity
Today – The Missionary Who Wouldn’t
Retire by Krish Kandiah. You can read the full article here.

The
gospel in community

“...I remember being in a crowded living room in Birmingham as a group of
university evangelists and apologists sat at the feet of a very old man who
needed a magnifying glass to read his tightly typed notes. He explained that
the bottom line of his whole theological project was "the doctrine of
election." That was my first encounter with Newbigin, and after immersing
myself in his writings for five years, I discovered that his entire missiology
revolved around that idea. God's people are elected to join in God's mission to
call others to God in keeping with the Abraham calling, "blessed to be a
blessing." There is therefore a dual purpose: God wants to reconcile
people to himself, but also to reconcile people to each other. The election of
individuals cannot be separated from God's election of the church: we are
elected to be God's missionary people. The church is, by its very nature,
missional.

This
has two major implications. First, the church, not the individual, is the basic
unit of evangelism. A community that lives out the truth of the gospel is the
best context in which to understand its proclamation. This insight is at the
heart of courses like Alpha and of the best examples of church planting and
church growth...”

Sunday, 27 December 2009

Paul writes – I trust and hope that you've all had a wonderful Christmas doing those things that are special to you at this time of the year in your context. Merry Christmas from the ProdigalKiwi(s).

I had lunch with a
friend last week and during the course of our wide-ranging conversation I was
reminded of, and mentioned this recent interview with James K. Smith. The
interview is on the Calvin Institute of
Christian Worship blog.

Here’s an excerpt (the question is in bold text):

“Augustine, you argue, had it right: it's not what we know, it's what
and whom we love. How and why did Christians start to get this wrong?

...Somehow we started to see
ourselves differently. What we thought—the
ideas and beliefs we had in our head—were seen as the "essence" of
who we are. In other words, we start to
put less emphasis on what we doand more emphasis on what we believe/think...

You call
Christians to a countercultural awareness, to resist the cultural empires of
our age. How can we cultivate this awareness while avoiding the pitfalls of
resistance movements: self-righteousness, insularity, and oversimplification of
complicated conflicts?

Great question. Really great question.
Here's where I think the specifics of historic Christian liturgy make a big
difference. Christian worship owns up to
the messiness of things in all sorts of ways. The litany of confession
obviously comes to mind. But also just the nitty-gritty reality of worshiping
with an intergenerational community whose worship is "governed" in a
way by practices and rhythms we didn't invent. The very "gathering"
of a collection of folks into a worshiping congregation brings together all
this messiness and difference. I tell my
kids, church is where we go to learn to love people we don't like (and we hope
they're doing the same!). That in itself is a discipline that should give us
pause before identifying "our" cause as "the" cause...”

Unrelated I also wanted to record this reworking of the doctrinal
term “election” by Brian McLaren. I was reminded of it as I read Len Hjalmarson’s blog.

“Brian McLaren challenges orthodoxy, and questions the mediaeval version
of Jesus that’s been handed down through the centuries. One of the most important
clues to McLaren’s thinking is that he believes people have misunderstood the
doctrine of election. ‘Election’, he says, ‘is not about who gets to go to
heaven, it’s about who God chooses to be part of his crisis response team to
bring healing to the world.’

Wednesday, 23 December 2009

Paul
writes – One of the tremendous privileges of life is people
allowing you someway into the mystery of who they are, the mystery and the
complexity of their lives. Monday
evening, this week, was one of those special moments, a chance to sit and listen, and a
chance to be drawn a little way into another’s life and indeed, their
perspective on life, the values that compel them, and the life stories and
experiences that animate and shape them.

That this is a privilege, a gift if you like, is what
makes these rare occasions precious. We are each a wonderful mystery – a
mystery to ourselves, and also to others. Yet, on these occasions, the mystery
that is the other, the mystery that is a little way opened to us, extends to us
the possibility of healing, the possibility of seeing ourselves or some
dimension of ourselves anew. Maybe too it offers the invitation to us to grow a
little, to sink a little below the surface of our lives, and to deepen who we
are?

Monday reminded me of that. Pip reminded me of that.

One theme woven through that conversation
was how we see the world and how we
see our lives, particularly with respect to that which seems adverse and unfair.

John O’Donohue in his wonderful little book Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic
World reminds us of this as well. On pages 85-93 he reflects beautifully on
vision – the ways in which we, sadly, so often see our worlds and those around us. He begins, “…Many limited and
negative lives issue directly from… narrowness of vision” and then continues by
describing what he terms “styles of vision”. For some of us we look a our world and those around us with “fearful
eyes”- “all [we] see and concentrate on are things that can damage and threaten [us].” For others, or at other times, it’s “judgmental eyes” through which we
see. We are always “excluding and separating”, and therefore “never see in a
compassionate or celebratory way.” Through the eyes of judgement we give expression to the doubt and deep insecurity of our lives and are unable to see the nuances of truth and other persons through
the lens of paradox.

At other times, we see and engage our world through the “eyes of indifference”.
“Nothing calls or awakens…” Indifference places us “beyond the frontiers of
compassion, healing and love.”

For some the eyes through which they see are the
“eyes of resentment”. “Everything is begrudged. People who have allowed the
canker of resentment into their vision can never enjoy who they are or what
they have.” Who they are and what they have is never enough. They struggle to embody gratitude and to live in the present moment - a seeming lack of fulfillment or success in the past gives birth to future expectations of continued disappointment.

Then of
course, there are the “eyes of inferiority” – “everyone is greater; others are
more beautiful, brilliant, and gifted than we are.

And, most importantly, the eyes and vision so many of us long for are the “eyes of love”. “If we could
look at the world in a loving way”, O’Donohue writes, “then the world would
rise up before us full of invitation, possibility and depth.” The past would be gently accepted. “The loving eye”,
he says, “can even coax pain, hurt, and violence [especially that we direct
toward our selves] towards transfiguration and renewal.”

Conversations like those I experienced on Monday gift to us the
possibility of seeing differently, of seeing through the eyes of another, and
in that process of changing our habitual ways of seeing and engaging our own lives
and the worlds which we inhabit.

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

Paul writes - Over
the weekend I finally got to have a look through Anglican historian and
commentator Diarmaid MacCulloch's huge new book, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years(1184 pages). It looks fascinating, is
beautifully presented, and comes in at NZ$65; but I’m not sure I’ll get a copy,
not because it wouldn’t be a great addition to any half-decent theological
library (private or otherwise), nor because MacCulloch hasn’t done a very fine
job, but because I doubt that I would ever read it in its entirety, and would
likely only read a chapter or two. I appreciate history, but have never been a
big reader of history and frankly this book has more pages than I would ever be
able to read on the subject. A smaller tome that reflects accessibly,
historically and theologically on contemporary ecclesial challenges would be a
big help. We need the big picture and the back-story, but how big does that
picture and back story need to be?

Perhaps Harvey Cox’s new
book, The Future of Faith (256
pages) will offer a more accessible and practical way of bringing history and
our contemporary context into conversation?

That said, I hope we get
the BBC television adaptation of MacCulloch’s book here in NZ for purchase in
due course. I will make a point of securing it and watching it. A more fruitful
approach for me when it comes to history.

Meantime, here are some excerpts from MacCulloch’s Christmas newsletter
to Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams, published in the Observer last Sunday
(20/12/09)

Dear Archbishop
Rowan,

“Even though I'm
not sending Christmas cards this year – ran out of time – you are not going to
escape my seasonal circular letter. It is filled not with the record of my many
achievements, holidays taken, operations survived and the GCSE results of my
imaginary children, but instead has a few tidings of great joy, because you
seem to need them at the moment.

You sounded a bit
down the other day when you were talking to the Daily Telegraph, complaining that our government assumes
"that religion is a problem, an
eccentricity practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities". Well, the
government is often right about that, so if I were you I wouldn't worry about
it too much. I'd be more worried if the government didn't think religion was a problem...

...My third reason
is the election of a bishop in a diocese of the American Episcopal Church in
California who happens to be a lesbian. There's maturity for you. Faithful,
seriously worshipping Christian folk have made a free decision in an open
election that the best candidate for the job is a woman, who has shown by her
decisions in life that fidelity, love and honesty are demanded by her practice
of the Christian gospel.

...Meanwhile, I
hope that you may rejoice at Christmas in this multiform church over which you
so graciously and thoughtfully preside – give a welcome to the continuing
unobtrusive and untrumpeted trickle of converts, not least from your sister
church of Rome, join in the worship at one of your cathedrals, so packed to the
gills, so well cared for and cherished as never before in their history, and
enjoy the heritage of beautiful music that is one of the treasures of
Anglicanism...

...The Christmas
story may be expressed in biblical forms that are not very good history and
which some of your congregations may find difficult to take literally, but
Christmas music can sweep past the puzzles of words to celebrate a new human
life, weak, vulnerable and humble, which is glorified precisely for that. You
will know the saying of Thomas Aquinas, which a wise old Dominican friar once
quoted to me over a great deal of Irish whiskey, that God is not the answer, he
is the question. As long as your church, and all other churches, go on asking
the question, they will never die.”

“…These conflicted
thoughts of war and peace, naïveté and realism were churning in my mind a day
or so after the speech as I walked through a plaza in Riverside, California.
Who is more naïve, I wondered – those who believe violence can overcome
violence, or those who believe violence always creates new and more complicated
problems? By chance, at that moment in my musings I came upon a monument to
Gandhi that stands between the city’s Convention Center and old mission. As I
slowly circled the monument, it wasn’t the quotes from Gandhi that seized my
attention, but rather this quote from General Douglas MacArthur:

In the evolution of
civilization, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventually to adopt
Gandhi’s belief that the process of mass application of force to resolve
contentious issues is fundamentally not only wrong but contains within itself
the germs of self-destruction.

It would be
one thing if these words were spoken by an idealistic young candidate, a
community organizer, a pastor, a poet, or a movement leader. But when a
seasoned general from World War II – well beyond naïveté about either war
or evil – makes a statement like this, one hopes that the rest of us will
at least give his words a second thought…”

And, if you
missed my earlier e-mail, I recommend listening to Brian McLaren being
interviewed by Rachel Kohn in Australia in Nov 09. You can find it, and the transcript, here.
Be quick though, the audio won’t be available for much longer.

Sunday, 20 December 2009

Paul writes - The latest issue (Summer 2009 – 2010) of Refresh Journal has been published and is also online as a PDF. This issue takes as its theme the Recession, and as Andrew Dunn, the editor, writes:

“...Looking at the articles and other material we include in this issue we are asking two basic questions without actually asking them!

In the diagnosis of all that has happened, what human and spiritual values have gone astray and led to this situation?

As we think it through, reflect on it biblically and theologically, can we see ways ahead that are necessary, encouraging and hope-full?

There are a broad range of very interesting articles / reflections, including an excellent essay by Kath Rushton RSN – Jesus and His Sermon

Here’s an excerpt:

“…The external deserts arise from internal deserts, hence the vital importance of a religious reawakening of the interior dimension of individuals and peoples in order to build structures of grace and solidarity. The truth of the Sermon of the Mount contrasts a culture of affluence with a culture of inner freedom to create conditions for social justice…”

Also, you'll find below a un-abridged version of the article I wrote, which is included in this issue of REFRESH.

Friday, 18 December 2009

Paul writes – If you haven’t been
following The Insatiable Moon Story,
or you haven’t checked in for a little while, can I encourage you to do so. Gareth Higgins has been beautifully capturing
the heartbeat of this kiwi film-making story, its actors, production team and
crew, who against the odds, have demonstrated, absolutely, over the last month
and a bit that “they knew they could, they knew they could!” And, by the
end of today, they will have. The filming will have been completed.

“…At one stage the budget and interest was such that noted
Scottish Indie film-maker Gillies MacKinnon was set to direct it, and James
Nesbitt and Timothy Spall to appear alongside lead actor and Whale Rider star
Rawiri Paratene.

Recession and lack of support on the home front - New
Zealand Film Commission? - scuppered that particular permutation.

And the film, along with several years of hard labour,
teetered on the brink of oblivion.

But the constant support of Paratene, a British producer,
and Mike's own dogged self-belief - the same that saw him make the
prize-winning Dunedin short film Cake Tin on a wing and a prayer - meant they
adjusted their sights, opted for a shoe-string budget, high-end digital
technology and found the support of a number of professionals who believed that
there is more to the film business than the business of films…”

Here’s three of Gareth’s posts that really moved me
as I reflected on my own experiences of being on set and on my own
understanding of the back-story – here,
here, and here.

The journey to-date has been a magical experience,
and something very special will emerge in due course. As post-production work
begins in 2010 naysayers and those unwilling to support the project will have a
chance to review their decisions and do the right thing for New Zealand
Film-Making and the widespread telling of New Zealand stories, profoundly human
stories earthed in this land, in our experiences as a richly diverse people,
and with the grace and power to touch and engage the deep places of the human
heart, the longing for this world to be a better place, and for our own lives
and living to be more humanizing, hopeful, redemptive, meaningful, and whole.

We need movies like The Insatiable Moonon our big screens, and eventually being played
on our televisions and home theatre systems. We need these stories skillfully
and sensitively exported and brought into conversation with other equally rich
stories of context, people, community, relationship, subversion, dreams, hopes, mythology and archetype from around the world.

Well done to all who’ve been involved in “Moon” to
this point. You’ve done something very special, which I guess that’s the
natural outcome of the kinds of persons you each are, and of the rich and
diverse range of skills and experiences you’ve been willing to share
collaboratively with each other.

Thursday, 17 December 2009

Paul writes – I’m always on the lookout for good movies,
particularly those that you might want to describe as “independents”,
“non-mainstream” and/or “foreign language”. James K. A. Smith is an occasional commentator on movies he’s seen,
and having watched one or two, I now typically take notice.